This is one of two delightful drawings depicting children at large parties with dancing done by Sophie Latimer Hoffman, a Baltimore school friend of Eliza "Didy" Ridgely (1828-1894). She sent them to Didy in 1843 along with another satirical drawing poking fun at their school mistress. Children’s costumes of that day are faithfully rendered. Also depicted are African American servants who are passing trays of food and playing music.

Little Miss Eliza Ridgely (1858-1954) looks none too happy to be having her photograph taken in a Baltimore studio. She pays little attention to the doll lying on her lap. The eldest daughter of Charles and Margaretta Howard Ridgely was named for her grandmother and aunt. She became a social reformer and activist in Baltimore, founding the United Women of Maryland which championed assistance for the underprivileged, especially woman.

This image depicts a Union signal station in western Maryland atop Elk Mountain. Both sides controlled the position during the war, but Union soldiers fortified Elk Mountain after the Battle of Antietam.

This charming statue shows Eliza "Didy" Ridgely White Buckler (1828-1894) holding her infant son William H. Buckler (1867-1953). In later life, Willie Buckler said that it was sculpted “…in Rome by Romanelli in the spring of 1868.” Willie, his parents, his older half-brothers Henry and Julian White, and his cousins John and Charles Ridgely had spent six months in the Eternal City beginning in late 1867. Pasquale Romanelli’s (1812-1887) principal studio was in Florence. The statue may have actually been sculpted there when the family passed through the city on their way back to Paris.

This gelatin print of the dairy at Hampton shows a building that remained largely unchanged from the 19th century through the 20th century. In addition to being consumed on the estate, milk from the Hampton dairy was sold commercially until mid-century. The operation employed several workers including the dairyman seen here carrying a milk can.

An inscription on is snapshot “Mary, Aug 1936” identifies one of the long-time servants at Hampton. Mary had many roles at Hampton including cook. She is seen in front of the octagonal servants quarters, found just east of the mansion until the building burned in 1945.

Nancy Davis (1833 - 1908) was born a slave at Cowpens, the Howard family plantation near Hampton. However, she was free by the time this image was taken at a Baltimore photo studio during the Civil War. Davis was then nursemaid for little Eliza Ridgely (1858-1954), the daughter of Charles and Margaretta Howard Ridgely, and her brothers and sisters. Nancy continued to work for the Ridgelys of Hampton for many years, and is the only African American buried in the Ridgely family cemetery at Hampton.

Identified and dated in an inscription on the photo, a man who may be one of the tenant farmers or farm workers at Hampton is seen holding a dog near the farm side of the estate to the north of the mansion. The cow barn is nearby and the corn crib can be seen in the background.

Nancy Davis (1833-1908) greets Juliana Ridgely Yeaton (1862-1951) and Margaretta Sophia Ridgely (1869-1949), daughters of Charles and Margaretta Howard Ridgely who the longtime Ridgely family servant had cared for when they were children. Margaretta Howard Ridgely’s half brother James McHenry Howard recorded in his memoirs (1894) that Nancy “…has passed all her life with the family & has in the course of it had charge at times of the children of three generations.”